Plautia Urgulanilla Options

[frankq]

Anyone have any dope on the size of Claudius’ first real wife, Plautia Urgulanilla? Was she really an enormous woman or is this just a Graves concoction?

I have been raking over sources and can find nothing about this great physical size. Graves invents things, but he also takes gossiping leads from the ancient sources.

[Primus Pilus]

Anyone have any dope on the size of Claudius’ first real wife, Plautia Urgulanilla? Was she really an enormous woman or is this just a Graves concoction?

I have been raking over sources and can find nothing about this great physical size. Graves invents things, but he also takes gossiping leads from the ancient sources.

Did Graves rely strictly on Suetonius or did he delve into other sources? Suetonius simply says this:

He (Claudius) then married Plautia Urgulanilla, whose father had been honoured with a triumph, and later Aelia Paetina, daughter of an ex-consul. He divorced both these, Paetina for trivial offences, but Urgulanilla because of scandalous lewdness and the suspicion of murder....

He had children by three of his wives: by Urgulanilla, Drusus and Claudia...
Claudia was the offspring of his freedman Boter, and although she was born within five months after the divorce and he had begun to rear her, yet he ordered her to be cast out naked at her mother's (Urgulanilla) door and disowned

Clearly from that there is little to go on regarding her appearance. If Graves was strictly using Suetonius, than I'd concur that her size was indeed a concoction.

The wife of a minor (and mostly kept hidden) member of the imperial family would not have made her way onto a coin. Considering also that the son Drusus did not survive into adulthood he would not have been around later when Claudius was Princeps to convince his father to issue anything to honor her.

Interesting question, anyone else have anything?

[Pantagathus]

Dictionary of Greek & Roman biography & mythology just repeats Suetonius. For me, if William Smith and gang didn't elaborate with any other account, then that is all there was/is to go on.

[frankq]

The issue with her always stuck with me when I read I, Claudius back in the 70’s, especially the part where her sister-in-law goes screaming to her death before a window where Claudius is writing some text. He stirs, then watches as his wife lumbers like a giant down the stairs, totally stoic and unmoved by the grim deed she has just done.

Any case, I've combed every source, can't find a mention about her weight.

[frankq]

BINGO! I found something. From a German historian, Maike Vogt-Lüerssen:



Plautia Urgulanilla war mit ihren übergroßen Händen und Füßen als ausgesprochen häßlich beschrieben worden. Zudem galt sie als völlig ungebildet.


''Plautia Urgulanilla has been described as having extra large hands and feet and being ugly. In addition, she was deemed completely crude (uneducated).''

I would take uneducated in this context, since she came from good stock, as just that she was a general beast dead head in bearing. This, too, I remember from Graves.

[Primus Pilus]

BINGO! I found something. From a German historian, Maike Vogt-Lüerssen:



Plautia Urgulanilla war mit ihren übergroßen Händen und Füßen als ausgesprochen häßlich beschrieben worden. Zudem galt sie als völlig ungebildet.


''Plautia Urgulanilla has been described as having extra large hands and feet and being ugly. In addition, she was deemed completely crude (uneducated).''

I would take uneducated in this context, since she came from good stock, as just that she was a general beast dead head in bearing. This, too, I remember from Graves.

Indeed interesting... but where did he get it? He clearly read an inscription or a text and did not see an actual bust.

[frankq]

There were no footnotes, so I would have to wade through her long bibliography. She has many juicy tidbits too about Messalina that I haven’t seen before but whose presentation seems as if it is coming from ancient gossip sources. I find German painful enough to read without having to extend the effort of searching her bib, especially since she supplied no footnotes.

However, the fact that she described Plautia with huge hands and not as obese as Graves did (actually thick) shows she's not one of these sensationalist history writers, eager to harvest fiction as fact. Why she still holds a 19th century slant I dunno...

[caldrail]

I'm a little suspicious. Claudius was not an adonis, and quite clearly was lucky he wasn't exposed at birth. Having been sidelined for his disabilities he nonetheless makes appearances at public events. Would the Divine Augustus want him married to someone so coarse and unappealing? Wouldn't that make the embarrasement of Claudius worse?

Perhaps poor Plautia has received a bad press. She may not have been as desirable as some, but Boter got off with her didn't he? She was therefore willing to entertain an affair with someone of lesser status and quite possibly felt that being hitched to Claudius was a comedown despite being married into the royal family.

It is interesting that she isn't described in better detail by anyone. A sign of an unremarkable woman?

[WotWotius]

I believe Urgulanilla recieves a bad press because of her name. A while back I mentioned the name to a friend who has no idea who she is (like all the cool kids do), and the first thing that came to her mind was a brute with hairy arms and one eyebrow.

[frankq]

I'm a little suspicious. Claudius was not an adonis, and quite clearly was lucky he wasn't exposed at birth. Having been sidelined for his disabilities he nonetheless makes appearances at public events. Would the Divine Augustus want him married to someone so coarse and unappealing? Wouldn't that make the embarrasement of Claudius worse?

Perhaps poor Plautia has received a bad press. She may not have been as desirable as some, but Boter got off with her didn't he? She was therefore willing to entertain an affair with someone of lesser status and quite possibly felt that being hitched to Claudius was a comedown despite being married into the royal family.

It is interesting that she isn't described in better detail by anyone. A sign of an unremarkable woman?

Interesting speculation but she married Claudius in 10 AD, only four years before Auggie's passing. And they (royal family) tried to keep Claudius out of the limelight as much as possible. When Tiberius came to power, decorum and social events went to the winds, he could have cared less.

Yet, I think your suspicions are well founded. Compare the match to her to Messalina, a head turner of the times.